Meet the maker
AWKI
About AWKI
Founded in 2020 by Nathalia Padillia Pino, an environmental engineer from Ecuador, AWKI was born from a true passion for sustainability and environmental transformation. The name ‘AWKI’ has extremely powerful protective connotations – in the indigenous communities of Ecuador, the person that protects the tribe is named ‘The AWKI’ or ‘The Protective Spirit’. Following in the footsteps of ‘The AWKI’, AWKI’s mission is to protect the whole value cocoa chain. In addition to producing their delicious craft chocolate products, AWKI is dedicated to improving the world of bean-to-bar chocolate for cocoa growers themselves. As part of their mission, AWKI seek to empower female growers and vulnerable people by fighting gender inequality, gender violence, and providing new jobs. Today, Nathalia works alongside the production and manufacturing manager, Aziz, and the financial director, Daniel, who both fell in love with AWKI’s mission.
How they became makers…
Nathalia launched AWKI back in 2020, having spent many years working as an environmental engineer for Ferrero Rocher in Ecuador with visions to “save the world”. After realising that working at Ferrero Rocher wouldn’t provide her with the dream that she wanted, Nathalia turned to the world of craft chocolate. Her stepfather, a cacao expert with more than 35 years of experience, introduced Nathalia to the wonderful world of cacao through PAPÁCACAO, and Nathalia decided to call it quits at Ferrero Rocher to focus her efforts onto learning how fine cacao is grown. Alongside her stepfather, Nathalia travelled to many cacao-growing communities to talk to producers about how they harvested their crops, the post-harvesting process, the issues the communities faced and the female growers within the community.
At the same time, Nathalia’s mother decided to drop her Real Estate Agent job to learn how to make chocolate. Together, the pair began to experiment with cacao and chocolate, even creating a Cacao and Chocolate School. By this time, Nathalia had already fallen in love with the world of chocolate and travelled to France to study ‘Innovation, Strategy and Entrepreneurship ‘, where the inspiration came to her and AWKI was born.
AWKI’s Sourcing
AWKI works very closely with small producers and associations to produce the highest quality beans possible. Firstly, AWKI visit the cacao farms to identify the type of soil, the cacao varieties, and the growth dynamics (agroforestry or mono cultivos). They even consider whether the habitats are well conserved enough for the pollinator mosquito, as this impacts the volume of production. Next, the harvesting process is carefully checked and the post-harvesting process is analysed. AWKI encourages the farmers to ferment the beans for approximately 8 days, and to dry them in the sun for 4-5 days. The dried beans are then transferred to their facilities where they hold a raw cacao tasting, to identify the flavour profile. Based on this, AWKI then decides the roasting temperatures for each batch.
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